Tiger337

Park effects are not annual. They are averaged over 3-5 years. As for the innings. are you talking annual or career? Given how difficult it is for pitchers to pitch deep into games now, I believe innings have become more valuable now and should be rewarded more than ever for single seasons. For historic WAR, the value of the cumulative effect of WAR is questionable. It depends on whether you favor peak value or career value. If you like peak value more, then you can use WAA (Wins above average). In this case, a pitcher can not accumulate value unless he is better than average. I do agree WAR should not be gospel and that it is overused

That's because you're an offensive snob.

Both Iwakuma and Sale had better ERA+ and K/BB than Scherzer. Scherzer was surely penalized for playing in a pitcher friendly park.

It's OK. You are new, so I didn't recognize the sarcasm.

I don't get why the recent signings change whether or not they should trade Skubal. He was very unlikely to sign with them prior to free agency regardless and not very likely to sign with them when he's a free agent. I still hope they keep him for this year. The only exception would be if they got some kind of ridiculous offer which I don't think is going to happen.

Pitchers and catchers report on February 11. 24 days.

I don't believe so. They have been pretty open about most of it and they seem to honestly answer questions when asked about it.

I am not entirely sure what's under the hood myself, because they update it without publicly documenting it all the time. I think it is has gotten so messy that few people would really understand it anyway. That mioght be why they don't publicize it much. It is very hard to find official documentation on positional adjustments but I know it's based on an analysis of players who played multiple positions (I think in the same year or adjacent years). I don't know the details. Tango did it and it was peer reviewed, so the method is most likely sound. I can see problems with such an analysis, but there is probably no good way to do it if you are trying compare players historically.

True, but the difference in the amount of money you and your co-worker gets would probably have a bigger impact on the lives of average people than the difference in the amounts that Cobb and Skubal get.

It's not different from other jobs in that respect. It's just that there is a lot more money involved and the results are public.

I do understand that WAR has not been communicated well and I think it may be more complex than it needs to be if it's going to be presented to a wide audience. Perhaps, they could have one WAR for people doing research and one simpler WAR for average fans. Joe Posnanski has been suggesting something like that for years. It might piss off some sabers to see other fans using an inferior stat, but I could live with that. It would be like using OPS rather than wOBA. I don't think it's difficult to understand why a shortstop contributes more to his team than a first baseman just by being a shortstop though. And I know you understand that. Maybe, it could just be presented better.

I'm not sure how you want to fix that. Do you want to get rid of positional adjustments and ignore position in evalualting a player or do you think that the positional adjustment for first basemen in particular is too harsh? I can't really justify the former, but the latter is possible.

He was strictly a DH with the Tigers. He played a little 1B after he left the Tigers. He didn't play enough there for me to have an opinion on how good he was, but his career didn't last as long as it did for his defensive skills. Early in his career, he was a decent right fielder.

Maybe, but it seems like there are just as many (if not more) injuries now than there was in the past.

I doubt it. I believe they would be more likely to reduce pitchers to 12 max. Manfred is not happy about the increasingly shorter starts and there has been talk about incentivizing longer starts. They'll probably do something stupid, but I don't think more pitchers will be the answer.